Execution
by Herdo
Summary: This is a short and shitty fic about how I imagine how the mysterious dead caretaker of Ruby that the song Red Like Roses Part 2 is about died.


**Execution**

* * *

The woman looked over the cold and bare forest with dull eyes. Her beautiful pale skin was marred with bruises from the brutal questioning that she had endured for the past five days.

She and the platoon of military police officers stood on a snowy cliff that overlooked the dark forest that surrounded their kingdom. The forest thrived with Grimm and she had spent many years wandering the empty paths, slaying the prowlers of the night in the name of humanity.

She was a huntress, a top graduate from the prestigious Beacon Academy, and former apprentice of professor Ozpin himself.

Her name was Summer Rose, matriarch of the Rose clan and single mother and widow. Her husband had been slaughtered in a Grimm attack eight years ago, which led to her being forced to raise their daughter Ruby, now ten year old, alone.

But despite her impressive history, the fact didn't change that she had been captured by the military police that controlled the kingdom.

"Attention!" The commanding officer bellowed and the other nineteen officers saluted.

"We've gathered here this evening to pass a judgment to this woman, Summer Rose, huntress and current head of the Rose clan. She is here to answer for her crimes. Lieutenant Garble, please read the charges."

A young man with a goatee stepped forward and opened an official scroll which he began to read from.

"Huntress Summer Rose of the Rose clan stand accused of being a race traitor. One week ago, during the latest Grimm raid, she made the choice of protecting Faunus instead of humans."

Garble coughed and then continued.

"This action led to a weakening of the defense for our human civilians and fourteen grim managed to breach our defenses and killed seventy humans. Twelve of them were part of the military police and the remaining fifty-eight were civilians. Had the huntress stayed within the area that we had assigned to her, then there is a certainty that these lives could have been saved."

He took a short breathing break, to catch his breath.

"However, Summer Rose chose to move to the Faunus labor camps and protect the workers there. She managed to kill all the assaulting Grimm that approached the area. However, since she protected Faunus before humans she has been charged with the crime of race traitor. Faunus are less worthy creatures when compared to humans and anyone who puts the life of a Faunus over a human is a traitor to our race, and therefore a threat to humanity which must be put down."

He finished the reading of the scroll and turned to the beaten woman, clad in her signature white cloak.

"Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

She was quiet. She had suffered several blows to her throat which made her nigh-incapable of speech but even if she could defend herself, she knew that it would be meaningless.

Faunus were discriminated in all kingdoms and often hated or feared for their different appearance. She however saw them as unfortunate humans and had made a choice to protect their camp from the Grimm, as it was far more vulnerable if compared to the human city defenses. She had hoped that the defenses would hold while she protected those that could not defend themselves.

However she had overestimated the walls and defenses of her city and her heart wept when she heard the tormented screams of humans being devoured and butchered by Grimm.

She knew that these ignorant men would never let her leave this place alive. Her crime was too great to be ignored in their opinion. That is why she remained silent.

The silence was deafening, only disturbed by the wild and chilling winds that blew in the cold winter night.

"Can't even deny your crimes then? Very well, that always makes it easier to write the reports. Got any last words?"

She was silent for a moment before she made up her mind and tried to speak. The damage that her throat had suffered made her stutter and croak in a very awkward and pitiful manner.

"P-please don't harm my daughter Ruby. L-let her live. And c-could you send a letter to professor Ozpin of B-beacon Academy? Tell him that I've fa-failed the mission he-he gave me… Those a-are my only requests."

The officer in charge looked at the woman who kneeled in the snow, her white cloak that floated in the chilling wind.

"Very well. I give you my word that your daughter Ruby Rose won't be harmed. And I'll send a letter to professor Ozpin tomorrow that will explain what happened and I'll include your last words in it. Now then, private Melden, if you may?"

He nodded to a young man with a heavy build, who started to walk towards the huntress with ominous slow steps. In his hands rested a massive axe, which was designed for one purpose only:

Decapitation.

The executor stopped beside the kneeling woman, his axe held with steady hands. He looked at his commander who gave the wordless order.

Two low ranking officers removed her white hood and placed her kneeling at the very edge of the cliff. The height made her feel a sickening vertigo, and she realized that tears fell from her eyes due to the fright that she felt.

"_This is it. I am about to die..!"_

Those were her last thoughts before the executor swung his axe and buried it deep in her neck.

He didn't cut all the way through due to not sharpening it for the last few weeks and thus had to rip it out into the cold air.

She let out an inhuman screech of pain as filled her entire body and a fountain of blood sprayed out from the neck, dyeing her white cloak in dark red splatter. The sight was horrifying and most officers had to look away from the gory image of a half-cut neck.

Melden ignored the blood that sprayed onto his blue uniform and swung his axe down a second time over her neck. This time he got all the way through and the screaming woman was instantly silenced as her head fell down the cliff and into the dark forest below them. Grimm would most likely feast on it before the night was over.

The body was dragged backwards by two low ranking officers who looked very disturbed by the beautiful clothed body which lacked a head. The blood was still spraying all over the body and her clothes. Her cloak, which had once been whiter than snow was now red and sticky from the large amount of blood that sprayed from the gaping neck.

The commander looked at the decapitated body of the huntress with a disgusted grimace.

"I guess that takes care of it. Bury the body here. She served our nation for many years and deserves an honorable resting place despite the fact that she was a race traitor."

She walked towards the body and leaned down. He removed the blood soaked cloak and handed it to a low ranking officer that stood nearby. He absentminded noted that the blood was red like roses.

Then he noticed something else. He grabbed a simple pendant that she wore around her neck and opened it. A poem was engraved on the inside of the pendant:

_Summer Rose – Thus Kindly I Scatter_

"What does that mean, sir?" A nearby rookie asked nervously.

He shock on his head and stood up.

"Don't know. It might be a memory of her late husband. Make an stone altar with those words engraved onto it here. And send the cloak to the young Ruby Rose. It will be her precious memory of her mother."

"Sir, are we really going to let the young Rose live? She might seek revenge against us if she finds out about the events that happened this evening. She has the blood of a huntress so she might become a potential threat in the future."

He scratched the stubble on his chin while he considered the question of his subordinate.

"…Yes, we are going to let her live. I gave my words. But it might be unwise to keep her here in our kingdom. She might discover the truth. So here is what we are going to do: We'll send her away."

His subordinates looked at him with confused expressions.

"We'll send her to the kingdom of Vale, which is the only one that accepts adoptions at the moment. I'm sure that she'll find a foster family over there. We'll confiscate the belongings of the Rose family for now and return them to Ruby Rose when she reaches the age of majority. Anyone got any questions or objections?"

The men shock on their heads.

"Good. Now get digging. I want that body buried before the Grimm can get to it. I'll go back to the city, as I have a letter to write. Keep up the good work men!"

And with that said, he marched off, back towards his home, one of the four sanctuaries of humanity.

* * *

The military police worked hard and managed to hide the truth and convince the public that the popular and loved huntress Summer Rose had fallen in battle, protecting her fellow humans from a Grimm ambush. And the ten year old Ruby was devastated by the news.

She fell into a deep depression and clutched the blood soaked cloak of her mother constantly that had been given to her from the military police. She did not care about the blood that sullied her tiny body. All that mattered was that her mother was dead and she was all alone in the world.

Two weeks after she was informed about the death of her mother, she was placed onto a plane that flew her to the kingdom of Vale, where she would be adopted by a hopefully kind family.

She was soon adopted by the strange Xiao Long family and did her best to act normal and tried to get over her depressing past.

But no matter how hard she tried, she could never stop the ominous nightmares about the mysterious Cliffside Altar and the ghostly figure in a white cloak that always hovered above it. There was something that she was missing, a piece of a puzzle. It was certainly something about her mother's death.

She swore to herself that she would find the piece and solve the mystery. She could feel that something was not right. She would do anything to find out about the truth about her beloved dead mother…


End file.
